I 



B X 






n^T THE STRATEGV 

mhm of the 

DEVOTIONAL LIFE 




LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 




vumatmHsaai-M 




Class _L_. 

Book L_ __ 



Copyright N°. 



CCBYESG1H DEEOSm 



THE STRATEGY OF THE 
DEVOTIONAL LIFE 



The Strategy of the 
Devotional Life 



By 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH, Th.D. ; D.D. 

Pastor Central Methodist Church, Detroit, Mich. 

Author of "The Productive Beliefs." 

"The Clean Sword" etc. 




Nfew York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1922, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



,+W 



*>' 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 



JAN - 6 '23 



Cl A690943 






n 



To the Members of the Council of Cities of the 
Methodist^ Episcopal Church who gave a most 
generous hearing to the addresses herewith 
published when they were delivered at the an* 
nual meeting of the Council in Chicago in 1922, 



Preface 

A LITTLE while ago the author of the 
studies which make up this volume 
was asked to give a series of devo- 
tional addresses to a group of city workers 
gathered in Chicago from all parts of the 
United States. He found the task of pre- 
paring these addresses particularly stimulat- 
ing as well as demanding. The study of the 
strategy of the devotional life from the 
standpoint of the experience of the city 
worker had allurement as well as pitfalls of 
its own. It was clear at once that the mani- 
fold life of the throbbing metropolis must 
itself be made a part of the devotional ex- 
perience and indeed must be interpreted by 
it. So the chapters on " The Two Cities/' 
" The Individual and the City of God," and 
" The Romance of the City " were written. 
But the worker in the great and vital city 
feeling all the movement of its own intense 
and critical thinking must face the necessity 

7 



PREFACE 



of basing his devotional life upon a deep 
meeting of mind and heart. He must see 
the relation of " The Courage of the Mind " 
to the life of the spirit if he is to command 
the respect of keen young men in the great 
town. He must discover just what convic- 
tions upbuild that inner life which he would 
make a part of the life of the city. He must 
learn what are the " Creative Beliefs." 
Then his warm and rich experience must 
be understood in relation to the long past 
which lies behind. He will have a new 
capacity to make his own experience a gift 
to be shared as well as a privilege to be 
maintained when he has apprehended the 
nature of the " Historical Continuity " of 
his faith and his life. 

By this time deeper questions emerge. 
The most testing and terrible problems of 
the city have to do with questions which 
effect the conscience. How can a man be 
prepared to face and meet these questions 
triumphantly. How can the devotional life 
of the city worker equip him for moral lead- 
ership. The inevitable answer is that the de- 

8 



PREFACE 



votional life itself must become a fellowship 
with the " Conscience of God." One last 
pressing question remains. Life all about 
the man in the great modern town is inor- 
ganic. It is so in the city, in the manifold 
institutions men have built, and in the indi- 
vidual life. The profound experience of the 
tragedy of all this inorganic activity and the 
personal appropriation of Christianity as a 
power to make life organic will touch the 
very deepest possibilities of the devotional 
life as an inner experience and as an inspir- 
ation to creative and brotherly activity. So 
the man in the throbbing metropolis reaches 
his great hour as he comes to experience 
the " Organic Life." Now he becomes not 
only a worker but an inspirer " living in the 
City of Man for the City of God." 

L. H. H. 

Detroit, Mich. 



Contents 

I. The Two Cities . . , .13 

II. The Individual and the City of 

God ...... 20 

III. The Romance of the City of God 28 

IV. The Historical Continuity . 36 
V. The Courage of the Mind . . 44 

VI. The Creative Beliefs . . .53 

VII. The Conscience of God . . 61 

VIII. The Organic Life . . .70 

IX. Living in the City of Man For 

the City of God . . .81 



ll 



THE TWO CITIES 

HISTORY is a tale of many cities. It 
is also a tale of many countrysides. 
But it is essentially a tale of massive 
and masterful towns. When you have told 
the story of Babylon and Nineveh and Susa 
and Jerusalem and Tyre and Athens and 
Rome and Alexandria and Venice and 
Florence and Genoa and London and Paris 
and Lisbon and Antwerp and Amsterdam 
and Vienna and Moscow and New York and 
Boston and Berlin you have fairly well told 
the tale of the life of the world. The man 
who lives in one of the world's great cities 
is all the while feeling the very pulse of life. 
The man who is serving a modern town 
in the name of the great Master comes to a 
supreme task with the need of supreme 
inspirations and constant reinforcements. 
The peril of waning enthusiasm, of the loss 

13 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

of passionate optimism, of the coming of 
coroding cynicism is always before him. 
He must discover the secret of fountains of 
vitality playing within if he is to do con- 
tinued and effective work for the city with- 
out. His devotional life must furnish per- 
petual energy for his life of service.j 

A man's devotional life is lived in those 
hours when he shares his whole passing ex- 
perience with the Master of his life. His 
prayer has a range equal to his thoughts 
and his worship has an area equal to that 
of his life. When a man's life is full of 
things never mentioned in his prayers a 
good portion of the territory of his person- 
ality has not yet come within the range of 
the divine influence. When his prayers are 
full of things never expressed in action there 
is the beginning of unreality and dishonesty 
in the devotional life. The picture of a 
man's life of prayer should be the actual 
portrait of his whole personality in all the 
ranges of the adventure of living. 

The Christian in the city can never pray 
long without remembering his town. The 

14 



THE TWO CITIES 



tides of its life pass through his petitions. 
And all his experience of its manifold mean- 
ings becomes part of his devotional life. If 
we attempt to follow the fashion in which 
the life of the city passes through the prayer 
of a Christian worker we will come upon 
several very important aspects of the ex- 
perience. 

In the first place there is a deep and poig- 
nant fear of the city which once felt is never 
forgotten. Moving through all its streets, 
hidden back of its multitudinous doors, flut- 
tering beneath the bright lights of its white 
ways at night, there are physical and moral 
and spiritual tragedies which pierce the 
heart. Many people learn to take them for 
granted. It is precisely the characteristic 
of a Christian that he cannot take them for 
granted. And the more he is conscious of 
the influence of the Master and Brother of 
all men, the less he can take them for 
granted. A Christian experience keeps a 
man's sensibilities keen and responsive. 
When the hour of easy and complacent ac- 
ceptance of things as they are has come to 

15 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

a man's life the time of his power to do the 
best sort of Christian service has passed. 
Only men who keep alive the fear of the 
city, the sort of fear which only brave men 
and women can feel, only such can be 
trusted with the critical matters of leader- 
ship in our great towns. 

Then there is the love of the city. What 
Jerusalem was to Isaiah, what Florence was 
to Dante, what Boston was to Phillips 
Brooks in their own measure and in their 
own way each city will become to the men 
who keep them forever upon their minds 
and in their hearts and all the while attempt 
to see them with the eyes of Christ. The 
whole surging bewildered wonderful proces- 
sion of men and women and little children 
in one of our cities comes to hold its own 
place in the heart of the worker. Deeper 
and deeper as the years go on becomes the 
love of the town. And as its streets are 
bathed in his prayers and the tale of his 
longing for its good is poured out in pas- 
sionate petition, the love of the town be- 
comes a profounder reality. 

16 



THE TWO CITIES 



There is a wonderful thing which a man 
learns about a city. He learns that it has an 
exhaustless capacity to surprise him. He 
learns to expect the unexpected. He learns 
to find love where you would suppose it had 
been stamped out. He learns to find the 
fair flowers of all the virtues blooming in 
most unexpected places. He learns to find 
wistful outreach after goodness and God 
where you would suppose these things had 
been forever effaced. And as in prayer he 
remembers all these experiences he is given 
a child's heart in the midst of the cool and 
disciplined experience of a man. When you 
no longer expect to be surprised you are 
worthless. When wonder has died from a 
man's heart and expectation has faded from 
his eyes the very genius of his task has gone 
from him. But this is just the thing which 
does not happen to the leader who keeps the 
city in his heart while he prays. He has no 
illusions about its vices. He has no illusions 
about its corruptions. He has no illusions 
about its sins. But he knows also its hunger 
for God. He knows also its capacity for 

17 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

God. He knows that exhaustless quality of 
personality which causes it to be true that 
just when you think that you are defeated 
and all the doors are closed the amazing 
thing happens and the happy hour of vic- 
tory arrives. 

But it is not merely the city where he 
dwells which is in the heart of the Christian 
worker. He has seen a vision of another 
city. He has seen it come down out of 
heaven. It is not the city of man though it 
is a city of men. It is the city of God. It is 
the city his city may become. As Isaiah 
dreamed of the day when Jerusalem would 
be a righteous town so he dreams of his city 
actually becoming the city of his Master 
.Christ. The consciousness of an eternal 
reality is like a foundation of rock. As 
Plato saw the ideal state more real than the 
wonderful Athens he knew, so the modern 
Christian sees the triumphant city of God 
as a reality more dominant than the vivid 
marvelous town where he dwells. All the 
things which do not belong to the city of 
God will go down at last. That city is 

18 



THE TWO CITIES 



eternal. It is in the hour of deep moral and 
spiritual struggle that this vision becomes 
most potent and most possessing. But the 
man who goes out to the city of men fresh 
from this vision of the city of God can serve 
it and love it and bring the high realities 
within its reach as he never could do before. 
So our Christian leader is a believer in 
two cities. One is the city as it is today. 
The other is the city as it may become by 
the grace of God. His vision of the Holy 
City makes perpetual music under all the 
sadness and the tragedy of the town where 
he dwells. He has faith that the town where 
he lives has the capacity to become the city 
of God. Like Columbus when he crossed 
the unknown sea, like Magellan when he 
circumnavigated the globe, like the great 
pioneer men of all the years he believes in 
an ideal which shines with perpetual radi- 
ance in his own soul. 



19 



II 

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE CITY 
OF GOD 

SOMEBODY has to have an eye if the 
vision of the city of God is to be seen. 
With all our talk of the State, and Hu- 
manity, and Public Opinion there is no such 
thing as an eye in general or an ear in gen- 
eral or a brain in general. If thoughts- are 
to be thought somebody must think them. 
You have to have an individual mind to 
think socially. You have to have an indi- 
vidual heart to feel socially. You have to 
have an individual will to decide socially. 
" I John " must see the vision of the city 
coming down out of heaven. 

A great many people have come to have 
an entirely new conception of some as- 
pects of the life of New York at a certain 
period because they have read the amaz- 
ingly effective stories of O. Henry. Here 

20 



THE INDIVIDUAL 



was a man who saw pretty much every- 
thing. He saw the things which were vis- 
ible. And he saw a good many things which 
were invisible. He could meet people on 
the street and look right into their hearts. 
And so he painted his wonderful literary 
water colors of the great town. There is 
the raw material of a wonderful social pas- 
sion in the writings of O. Henry. The town 
was there before. Its romance and tragedy 
were there before. But O. Henry brought 
the seeing eye and the understanding heart. 
One responsive personality interpreted the 
life of the city. Years before the same thing 
had been done for London by Charles 
Dickens. He gave England new eyes to 
see its metropolis. He gave England a new 
conscience to face the problems of its life. 
He gave England a new heart to feel its 
human interest, and the poignant pathos of 
its suffering and the hidden beauty of its 
common life. It required an individual to 
make the city articulate. 

The City of God is hovering over every 
great town. But it requires a prophet to 

21 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

see it. It requires an individual mind to 
begin to think its great thoughts. It re- 
quires an individual heart to begin to re- 
spond to its great motives. The City of 
God must capture the city of man life by life 
and heart by heart. Great organization of 
noble ideals will come at last. Powerful 
codification of high principles must be 
achieved. But the basis of all this is first 
an individual man who sees the vision and 
dreams the dream. Then as he shares his 
purpose and his passion there are other in- 
dividuals whose eyes glow with the same 
ideal. And finally there are enough human 
centers of a new social passion to renew the 
life of the town. In this sense there is noth- 
ing more individual than the movement for 
social renewal. 

The city worker then has before him as a 
perpetual task the socializing of the minds 
of the men and women and children, espe- 
cially the children, who are all about him. 
They must be brought to see the vision of 
the city of God come down out of heaven. 
They must be led to believe that the city of 

22 



THE INDIVIDUAL 



man can become the city of God. And if 
this is to be done the city worker must him- 
self move about with an undimmed con- 
sciousness of the glory of that city whose 
messenger and prophet he is. There are 
many details of organization which require 
his attention. There is an endless amount 
of practical cooperative activity and of stern 
battling against entrenched evil and for the 
unattained good. But back of all this the 
one supreme gift of the worker to the city 
where he dwells will be his own undying 
faith, his own unabated confidence in the 
city of God. 

All this is seen to be critically important 
when we remember that the city worker is 
just the man who will find it easy to get lost 
in details. He is just the man who will find 
it easy to lose his vision in the midst of hard 
and sordid actualities. He will find it easy 
to lose his passion in the midst of the dis- 
illusioning years. For he is no protected 
closet philosopher. He is in daily contact 
with things as they are. And sometimes 
when he is weary and disheartened he would 

23 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

find it very easy to pray the prayer of the 
horror stricken character in the memorable 
poem who unable to bear the knowledge of 
the awful realities of the world cried out: 
" Oh, Godess make me blind again." The 
city worker sees sordidness in the daily 
practice of its ways of guile. He sees every 
noble word prostituted to an evil purpose. 
He sees every lovely ideal soiled upon the 
lips of men who give a verbal allegiance at 
the very moment when these ideals are be- 
ing trampled underfoot. He knows what 
it is to see treachery undisguised, to watch 
the unmasked workings of ingratitude, to 
see the power of evil beating down the good 
upon every street of the city's life. And it 
is this man under this terrible strain who is 
to be a power house of idealism, who is to 
be a source of permanent enthusiasm about 
the city of God. 

Of course the amazing thing is just that 
so many city workers do it. They confront 
this supreme demand and they do not fail. 
Others who know a hundredth as much as 
they of the slimy evil which serpent like 

24 



THE INDIVIDUAL 



crawls through human life become scornful 
misanthropists. And these apostles of the 
city of God know the worst and still believe 
in the best. There is no heroism more 
notable than this. 

And such heroism must have sources deep 
in the life of the soul. It must rise a per- 
ennial fountain from a life lived in contact 
with the God who is the hope of the city 
and the hope of the world. The living God 
is the only hope of the dying city. And that 
contact with the eternal mind and heart and 
will which renews human hope is a matter 
of the supreme strategy. It is here that we 
see the fashion in which the devotional life 
of the city worker perpetually renews his 
vision and sends him back fresh and keen and 
eager to his tasks. He must have a moun- 
tain w T here he sees things which cause his 
face to shine. And that is the mountain of 
his life alone with the great Master of life 
who is perpetually unwearied and who pur- 
sues his patient powerful way for the re- 
newal of the life of man. 

George Matheson was perhaps the great- 

25 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

est preacher in Scotland of his time. He 
fought with terrible handicaps. He knew 
all the lonely tragedy of blindness. And yet 
it came at last to be felt that God made him 
blind in order that he might see. His phy- 
sical liabilities were turned into spiritual 
assets. And as he stood in the midst of that 
great city, the Athens of the North, he 
brought the vision of things eternal to all 
who heard him. Sometimes it seemed as if 
all the other people were blind and he alone 
had power to see. He was never more 
graphic than in that sort of speaking and 
writing which appealed to the eye. At the 
very point where he was weakest he seemed 
to have become most strong. God had 
given him eyes in the midst of the darkness 
of the world. 

The city worker may be blinded by the 
sordidness all about him. Or he may come 
by God's great help to the place where his 
hope is all the surer, his confidence all the 
more steady, the light of his faith the more 
effulgent because he speaks from the midst 
of areas of moral darkness. He finds his 

26 



THE INDIVIDUAL 



task when he opens his door. He finds his 
power to maintain a permanent passion in 
the time of devotion when he is enabled 
in some little measure to see with the eyes 
and feel with the heart and think with the 
mind of the great Master of life. So he be- 
comes a center of undying social enthu- 
siasm,. So he keeps alive among men the 
vision of the city of God. So he finds energy 
for those endless conflicts which are the 
daily experience of those who do battle with 
evil in a modern town. So even the wheels 
of intricate organization come at last to 
move to the music of that city whose builder 
and maker is God. 



27 



Ill 

THE ROMANCE OF THE CITY 
OF GOD 

THE last public utterance of that 
knightly gentleman of the Free 
Churches, Charles Silvester Home, 
was entitled: " The Romance of Preaching." 
There was a certain fine daring in the use 
of this word Romance. Hard headed and 
skillful men busy with the tasks of organiza- 
tion and the activities of manufacturing and 
trade have always felt a rather disdainful 
superiority in the presence of this word and 
at least since the time of Cervantes even its 
friends have felt a touch of apology in the 
midst of their devotion. The romantic man 
we have a way of thinking is a visionary. 
You need to watch him carefully if there is 
some really important piece of work to be 
done and if you are wise when you trust him 
you will not trust him too much. Yet it re- 

28 



ROMANCE OF THE CITY OF GOD 

mains true that the man of vivid imagina- 
tion, the man of glowing and poetic mind, 
the man filled with a sense of the romance 
of life does succeed in getting things done 
which would never be done without him. 
Even in industry a flash of the divine fire of 
imagination makes the difference between 
the shrewdly successful man and the pow- 
erful captain of men whose name becomes 
a household word in all the world. The 
man who would do well by a modern city 
must not only see it as a city of God in the 
making. He must also see it as a center of 
constant and marvelous romance. As he 
prays about it and fills his hours of devotion 
with the thought of it he must be ever con- 
scious of its shimmering and glowing 
charm. 

Now this is exactly the character of the 
sense of the city which came to the author 
of the great words in the twenty-first chap- 
ter of the Book of Revelation. When we 
stop to think in a fresh and unhampered 
way of his words we are quite astonished by 
them. He chooses the very most romantic 

29 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

figure in ail the thought and feeling of man- 
kind. He likens the city to a bride. He sees 
the city coming down as a bride adorned for 
her husband. His thought of the city to 
use a modern figure suggests wedding bells. 
Just as a great romance ends with the happy 
wedding hour so his vision of the city of 
God is the vision of a great marriage cere- 
mony. The very essence of the happy ro- 
mance of the world is suggested in this most 
extraordinary figure. 

Now it must be confessed that a good 
many deep seeing and feeling and thinking 
people have not thought of a wedding when 
they have thought of the modern city. They 
have not thought of the preparation for a 
wedding. They have thought of a funeral. 
They have thought of decay and death. 
They have thought of disintegration and 
destruction. The horrible things in one of 
our modern towns have eclipsed all thought 
of beauty. When the moon was shining at 
night they have never forgotten the corpse 
which was lying in the house. Modern 
realism in literature is full of this sort of 

30 



ROMANCE OF THE CITY OF GOD 

writing, full of a deadly and terrible hon- 
esty, and unlightened by hope. It paints 
the modern town with crape always hang- 
ing on the door. 

The interesting thing about the flash of 
high romance in the vision of John lies just 
in the fact that he is as honest as any mod- 
ern realist. Nowhere has the contention be- 
tween good and evil been depicted with 
more dramatic force. Nowhere has the evil 
of life been described with a more awful 
honesty. His is not the easy optimism of 
one who has never seen evil. He has looked 
steadily into the eyes of the bad of life. He 
knows the whole story of its massive and 
sordid power. He knows the destructive 
passion which always lies back of the breath 
of the beast. And he has no illusions. He 
has no subterfuges. He uses words dark 
with horror and he paints pictures wet with 
the blood of conflict and lurid with the 
flames of evil burning its way through the 
world. No modern realist has written with 
more bitter and biting honesty of the dark 
facts of life. Sometimes his very symbols 

31 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

1 

become almost too terrible for our con- 
templation. 

Yet this very man has his sunlit vision of 
the city of God coming down out of heaven 
to be in this world. Against this very back- 
ground he paints his picture of exquisite ro- 
mance. It is in the midst of all this that the 
bride suddenly appears and the wedding bells 
begin to sound. After the most complete 
and remorseless honesty in dealing with the 
bad facts of life he unfolds before our eyes 
the shining beauty of this great hope. 

We see at once that there is all the differ- 
ence in the world between the romantic feel- 
ing of the man who has never faced the dark 
facts of life and the high romance of the 
man who has won his way to hope through 
the most bitter conflict with all the dark and 
sordid aspects of life. In the one case you 
have the optimism of ignorance. In the 
other you have the optimism won in battle, 
the finest fruit of moral and spiritual vic- 
tory. It is only the man who has seen a 
vision of the city of death who can have the 
last authentic vision of the city in shining 

32 



ROMANCE OF THE CITY OF GOD 

array the bride coming with eyes of hope 
and purity and mystery to the golden hour 
of gladness. 

In a way you have one of the great tests 
of Christianity here. It is not always hard 
to hope if you live a life which never faces 
the darker problems. It is not impossible 
to be honest if you walk the dark way of 
disillusionment and misanthropy. But the 
world waits for the voice which is both 
honest and hopeful. The world waits for 
the leader who has seen the worst and still 
believes in the best. 

Nowhere is this leader more potent than 
in the maelstrom of our modern city. He 
lives in its turbulent life. Its proud fierce 
waves beat upon him. He knows its best. 
He knows its worst. He also knows its 
God. And in great hours alone with the 
Master of life whose face he sees in the face 
of Jesus Christ he has won his passionate 
hopefulness. The romance of the city has 
been given back to him after all his disillu- 
sioning years. 

The man who comes fresh to the tasks of 

33 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

the day with this shining gladness brings 
something to the city which is more wonder- 
ful than all his plans and is more far reach- 
ing at last than all his programs. These are 
useful and necessary. But the renewal of 
spirit has the secret in it which the men and 
women of the city most need. To restore 
the light of noble romance to men's eyes as 
they go about the labors of a big modern 
town is to render them inestimable service. 
To teach men to develop in relentless hon- 
esty even as they grow in dauntless enthu- 
siasm is to interpret Christianity to them in 
the very terms of their struggle and their 
need. 

To be sure there is always a great element 
of the heroic in this attitude. Anybody can 
doubt the city of God. Anybody can refuse 
to believe in the shining bride. Only those 
who have been alone with the Master who 
kept his faith in Gethsemane and wrested a 
coronation from a cross can maintain that 
honest and gallant hopefulness which re- 
news the life of a city and is to renew the 
life of the world. 

34 



ROMANCE OF THE CITY OF GOD 

No city worker needs to be caught in the 
coils of his own endless labor. He can ap- 
proach the daily task with the morning light 
in his eyes. In the midst of all the perplex- 
ities and difficulties and disappointments 
there is light in his heart. He carries with 
him a perpetual sense of the romance of the 
city of God. He hears the silver wedding 
bells even when others only hear melan- 
choly fog horns sounding through the dark. 
And after the long burden of the work of 
the day of life itself he finds that at evening 
time there is light. 



35 



IV 

THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY 

THAT masterful and epochmaking phi- 
losopher Hegel lived through a tur- 
bulent period. The swift thrust of 
Napoleon's armies moved right across his 
life. His last years were spent in the city of 
Berlin where with the tides of a great me- 
tropolis moving about him he sought to find 
and to interpret the nature of that reality 
which lies back of all our life and is ex- 
pressed in it. There is something which 
has its own appeal to the imagination in the 
thought of this brilliant thinker standing in 
the midst of the currents of the life of a 
mighty city and teaching his students to 
view the whole unfolding pageant of human 
life and history. The Christian worker in 
the modern city needs just the perspective 
which comes from seeing the age at the end 
of the ages. His mind and his use of it in 

36 



THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY 

the apprehending of the meaning of the past 
have a definite and far reaching relation to 
his devotional life. 

George Matheson wrote some of the most 
notable devotional books of the nineteenth 
century. His life knew its own tragedy and 
its own victory. He was a man whose blind- 
ness released his sight. Dr. Matheson wrote 
in a style whose magic is the delight and 
envy of the reader who himself wields a less 
responsive pen. The thing which immedi- 
ately impresses the student of his devotional 
writing is his easy and natural and constant 
appeal to the mind. He refused to believe 
that the devotional life is something differ- 
ent from the life of the mind and something 
foreign to it. He believed that the only per- 
manent mastery of the heart must be a mas- 
tery of the mind as well, and he felt that 
you cannot keep control of the conscience 
unless the mind is also convinced. He filled 
devotional writing with a noble intellectu- 
ality. It was never self conscious. It was 
never colored by a subtle intellectual pride. 
But it constantly recognized that the mind 

37 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

has rights. And it was based upon the con- 
viction that there is a devotion of the mind 
which is one of the most wonderful devo- 
tions in all the world. 

The actual strategy of the devotional life 
is only understood when we recognize that 
the mind must join the heart in all the long 
and wonderful journeys of the inner life. It 
is when the whole personality is engrossed 
in the hour of devotion that the man comes 
forth with a fresh and resilient vigor ready 
for all the practical tasks of life. 

We see at once when we approach the 
whole matter in this way that the hour of 
devotion becomes a time of intense thought 
and a time of the most unremittent labor of 
the mind. It is not an easy going medita- 
tion. It is the most demanding exercise of 
every faculty of perception and thought and 
feeling. And it is all of this with a growing 
awareness of the presence and power and 
guidance and inspiration of that unseen 
friend who is the Master of Life. 

When we come to study the relation of 
the intellect to the devotional life we are 

38 



THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY 

soon confronted by that historical continuity 
which has been a part of the noblest life of 
man's mind. To be sure the armies of the 
mind move forward and backward. There 
are advances and there are retreats. There 
are dark defeats as well as glorious vic- 
tories. But with all this the stream of the 
mental life ever widens as it moves onward 
toward the great sea. And the hour of de- 
votion gives a man a great sense of the con- 
tinuity of his own life with that of the strug- 
gling and achieving thinkers in the great 
days which lie behind us. 

The man who does not pay the price of 
mental discipline and secure the large per- 
spective which a knowledge of history gives 
is quite likely to have a sense of new and 
strange adventure on paths where there are 
really many footprints of the men who have 
gone that way before. And when in his 
time of deep devotion he has entered into 
spiritual fellowship with the master workers 
who have built the very sort of structure he 
is trying to effect it gives him a new glad 
sense of human fellowship, a new sense of 

39 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

i 

that human solidarity which is so deep and 
noble a thing in the life of man. 

We are all too likely to think of the care- 
ful and scientific habit of mind as a recent 
invention if we are merely busy with its 
contemporary expressions. But if we go 
back to all the systematic classifications of 
Aristotle and see the fashion in which this 
amazing pioneer plotted out the life of the 
mind and gathered materials from far fields 
and estimated facts with a certain just and 
impartial weighing of the evidence, we will 
begin to see what a splendid and what an 
ancient tradition is really represented by the 
scientific method. As we watch the scien- 
tists of the Helenistic period in Alexandria 
we shall feel the thrill of their shrewd obser- 
vation and their notable discoveries. 

The young man who is captured by the 
moral and spiritual splendor of the vision of 
the world organized in one great unity of 
life is easily tempted to think of this inter- 
national mind as a new and untried experi- 
ence among men. If he really knows the 
past he will be called up sharply as he reads 

40 



THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY 

the De Monarchia of Dante with its hatred 
of war and its hope for a world built about 
the idea of international unity and interna- 
tional order. 

In fact the more a man knows of the ways 
of the minds of the great thinkers of the 
world the more he comes to a humble con- 
sciousness of how much he has to learn from 
them. He is saved from the provinciality of 
being merely a citizen of an age. He be- 
comes a citizen of the ages. And in that 
great citizenship he comes to a new under- 
standing of life. When all this is brought 
with humble eagerness into the time of de- 
votion and is played upon by the rich and 
mellow meanings of that experience the 
sense of historic continuity becomes one of 
the' great and inspiring features of a man's 
life. He lives and works in a modern city. 
But by a creative sympathy he has become 
a citizen of all great towns of all the ages 
and of all parts of the world. They have 
poured their richness into his own mind. 
They have brought their treasures to his 
growing life. 

41 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

All this does not rob a man of originality. 
It does not take the adventurous initiative 
out of his life. It makes him wise enough 
to know that sometimes he is an echo when 
he thought he was a creator. But this ex- 
perience is really not bad for him. It 
teaches him the meaning of the mistakes of 
the past as well as the power of its insights. 
And it gives him clear and critical know- 
ledge of the field in which the play of his 
own mind is to be felt. By mastering the 
contribution of the past his mind is released 
for a kind of original work which would 
have been impossible to him before. The 
past is not a chain which binds him. It is 
the trunk of a great tree which supports 
him. It does not inhibit criticism. It does 
make criticism wise with the wisdom of ex- 
perience. 

Every leader in the kingdom of God needs 
to find his way through the great significant 
highways of the past and then to take this 
outline of history into his devotional life and 
see it all in the light of his relation to that 
Living God whose face he has seen in the 

42 



THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY 

face of Jesus Christ. So past and present 
are joined as parts of one world and of one 
experience which the future is to complete. 
So the worker approaches his task with all 
the propulsion of a real understanding of 
the unity of life. 



43 



THE COURAGE OF THE MIND 

IN the city of Athens Plato taught when 
that city was the center of an intellectual 
life whose brilliancy still fills us with 
wonder. All about were objects of the most 
exquisite beauty. The material spoke in a 
voice of gracious and appealing loveliness. 
But all the while the invisible realities of 
the mind were more wonderful to Plato than 
all the movement and stir and visible beauty 
of that marvelous city where he taught. 
The pressure of the city was never allowed 
to dominate that free moving mind which 
was the great gift of Plato to his country 
and his time, to the whole world and to 
every time. The Christian worker in the 
modern city needs to capture some of this 
sense of the rights of the mind. He needs 
to achieve a courage in his mental life quite 
like that which inspired the fourth century 



THE COURAGE OF THE MIND 

Greek thinker. And in doing this he will 
be serving the very interests of that life of 
devotion whose fires give the noblest mean- 
ing to his life. 

The books of biography which boys love 
best to read tell us that there has been 
plenty of physical adventure in the world. 
The history of moral reforms wrought out 
at great cost of personal devotion makes it 
clear that there has been much moral adven- 
ture in the world. The books written by the 
great mystics telling the tale of their ad- 
ventures climbing along the difficult peaks 
of the life of the spirit make it plain that 
there has been much spiritual adventure in 
the world. There has also been much in- 
tellectual adventure. The real thinker is 
always an intellectual adventurer. And one 
of the most definite requirements for the 
actual advancement of life is the courage of 
the mind. There is to be sure a difference 
between a courageous mind and a reckless 
mind. But the mental life is a perpetual ad- 
venture and the man at the helm of the ship 
must not be afraid of storms. 

45 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

The fashion in which the life of the mind 
is made steady and strong at the very mo- 
ment when it is full of fine daring and cour- 
age is best seen when we think of the 
thinker as he brings the results of his think- 
ing to his hour of devotion made rich and 
inspiring by the thought that now he is 
offering the activities of his mind as a per- 
sonal gift to the Master of his life. It is in 
this hour that his daring is sobered by a 
high sense of responsibility. It is in this 
hour that he sees the things of time in 
the light of eternity and in this large per- 
spective reviews the meaning of all his 
thoughts. His intellectual life is not one 
thing and his devotional life another. 
The two are joined together in holy 
wedlock. 

These matters are illustrated by the re- 
lation of the Christian worker to the study 
of the Bible, to the conclusions of modern 
science, and to those social and economic 
relationships which make up so much of 
our life. 

The Bible is like a powerful swimmer. It 

46 



THE COURAGE OF THE MIND 

does not need artificial protection. It is so 
vital and so powerful that it only needs an 
opportunity to exercise its own great 
strength and skill. There is a subtle scep- 
ticism which would withhold the documents 
of the Bible from that careful and scrutin- 
izing investigation which is the inevitable 
lot of all other documents. The real man of 
faith is not afraid. He welcomes the test. 
He knows that there are no hidden secrets 
about the Old Testament and the New 
which must be kept from the public. He 
welcomes all reverent and candid investiga- 
tion. He knows to be sure that if a man 
approaches the Bible with no sympathy for 
its moral and spiritual ideals or for the life 
which it reflects he will inevitably misin- 
terpret it. But he knows also that this sort 
of misunderstanding is by no means confined 
to expert scholars who have more technical 
skill than spiritual discernment. He does 
insist that the only way to understand the 
Bible is to approach it along the line of that 
mighty moral and spiritual movement of 
which it is the record. The man who has 

47 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

e ■ -^ 

not the mind of Jesus will never understand 
the records of Jesus. 

Our Christian worker will view all Bib- 
lical problems in the light of that moral and 
spiritual life of which the Bible is the 
vehicle. He will ask whether the recorded 
wonder is in harmony with the character of 
God as it is revealed in the New Testament. 
All parts of the Bible as well as all parts of 
the world must be judged at last by the rev- 
elation in Jesus. And again and again this 
approach will throw new meaning on a Bib- 
lical book. If you argue about the histor- 
isity of the book of Jonah you will not even 
be thinking of its message. On the other 
hand if you remember that even as Jesus 
rebuked ungenerous bigotry by the story of 
the lost coin and the story of the lost sheep 
and the story of the lost son so an earlier 
teacher rebuked the narrow and ungenerous 
spirit of his age by the story of a sulking 
prophet who did not want to represent a 
loving God, who was angry when a city re- 
pented, who preferred to love a vine he 
could have for himself alone than to love a 

48 



THE COURAGE OF THE MIND 

■ ■ • ■ 

God he had to share with Nineveh, who was 
told that it was well for God to think of all 
the innocent children in a great city and 
even of its inarticulate cattle, — if in this 
fashion you approach the book you discover 
its moral and spiritual meaning and the 
question of its historicity is as idle as would 
be the endeavor to find the name of the 
prodigal son or the date of the birth of the 
woman who lost the coin of which Jesus 
spoke. 

Courage and reverence together will find 
their way through the Bible and leave it 
even more obviously the literature in which 
God speaks to men than it was before the 
days of critical investigation. 

The same principles apply in the matter 
of the relation of the Christian worker to the 
conclusions of modern science. Now of 
course there is science and science. If what 
a man calls science is an attempt to interpret 
a personal universe in impersonal terms, if 
the thinker talks of a mechanical process as 
if it could be self-running and self-explaining 
the artist and the poet as well as the Chris- 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

tian must simply retort that there is more 
in the universe than is dreamed of in his 
philosophy. Watts Duncan put this sort of 
protest for the artist in powerful form in 
that striking book " Alwyn." But it is 
possible to accept every well fortified con- 
clusion of modern scientific investigation 
and to see in all this new knowledge a fuller 
revelation of the way in which God has 
worked and the way in which he is working 
today. It is possible to think of the laws of 
nature as one brilliant thinker has put it as 
the habits of God. It is possible with all our 
analysis of the uniformity of nature to 
realize that as a clever man once said: "A 
law can never arrest anybody. It requires 
a policeman. " In other words it is possible 
to see that personality is the last word even 
in the world whose physical uniformities 
are so striking. Indeed the study of any 
man for one day gives us all the data we 
need. When a man asks another to pass 
the dish on the opposite side of the table he 
illustrates that combination of dependable 
law and free moving personality which is 

50 



THE COURAGE OF THE MIND 

found in the whole experience of life as man 
knows it. Any system which makes room 
for man as we know him must leave room 
for God as the Bible reveals Him. Courage 
and reverence together find their way 
through the world which the acute analysis 
of our time has made known to us. 

It is also true that the terribly difficult 
problems of social and industrial relation- 
ships requires the courage of the mind. It 
is easy to believe so deeply in the stable 
order that we overlook injustice. It is easy 
to be so indignant at injustice that we risk 
the whole fabric of civilization. The man 
who is to be as conservative as ancient good 
and as radical as all the new insights which 
are really dependable will have need of a 
brave mind. And the poise of reverent cour- 
age will here prove to be just what a man 
constantly needs. 

These things cannot be fought out wisely 
apart from the hour of devotion. And at its 
own peril will the life of devotion shut them 
out from its experiences. The courage of 
the mind must be a part of the devotional 

51 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

life, and the discipline of the mind is one of 
the most important results of the period of 
devotion. It is only when we do our think- 
ing in the light of the consciousness of the 
presence of God that we think as wisely and 
as nobly as it is possible for us to think. 



§2 



VI 

THE CREATIVE BELIEFS 

THE city of Alexandria early captured 
something of the cosmopolitan spirit 
of the world conqueror who founded 
it. Here the East met the West. Here all 
sorts of ideas which had inherent qualities 
of antagonism learned to live together with 
something like toleration. Here the He- 
brew religion learned to speak Greek in the 
work of Philo. And here Christianity 
learned to use Greek philosophy as its 
friend. There is something about a city 
which makes it easy for men to combine 
things rather than to set them over against 
each other. And this mental hospitality 
which has so much of good in it may easily 
go on to be a sort of intellectual friendliness 
which has lost its sense of fundamental dis- 
tinctions. The Christian worker in the 
modern city needs to scrutinize very crit- 

53 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

ically its cosmopolitan spirit. He is to re- 
ceive much from it. It also brings to him 
that which must be brought to the test of 
the closest and clearest thinking. This test 
must be met in the very name of that devo- 
tional life which is the surest source of in- 
spiration for all thinking and for all activity. 

" My only creed is to have no creed " said 
a clever talker who was always master of 
an easy and effective phrase. The little 
epigram was really more revealing than its 
author knew. For the human mind is so 
constituted that a man must have some sort 
of a creed even if it is more or less inarticu- 
late, even if it is a sort of formulated 
lawlessness. 

The real objections to creeds are worth 
careful consideration however. A creed 
may simply be wrong. It may run counter 
to facts. It may run counter to the deepest 
human experience. It may be the formula- 
tion of men's prejudices and not the ex- 
pression of their insights. And even when 
it is correct and true men are all the while 
tempted to take the sign as a substitute for 

54 



THE CREATIVE BELIEFS 



the thing signified. Nobody objects to the 
formula H 2 0, but it would be a very foolish 
man who would attempt to masticate the 
formula instead of drinking a glass of water. 
And it is just as unwise to make the formula 
a substitute for the reality when you are 
dealing with the water of life. Then it is 
so easy for men to fall to fighting about their 
formulas that they are apt to forget that 
spirit of unselfish love and patient sympathy 
which must exist back of and through all 
formulas if they are to have any helpful and 
abiding meaning. All this has led many 
earnest people to come to a feeling of dis- 
like for all creedal expressions. They are 
so afraid of becoming fossils that they are 
inclined to do without any vertebrae. 

When we stop to think with any clarity 
and depth it at once becomes evident how- 
ever that a great life must be based upon 
great beliefs. And the quest for a kindling 
and inspiring cluster of convictions is one of 
the great quests of life. 

The Christian worker goes to his hours 
of devotion to live in the very fellowship of 

55 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

\ ' ' ' - 

the highest thoughts about man and God 
and brotherhood and destiny. He has early 
learned that one of the wonderful ways in 
which a man can keep his creed vital and 
human and noble is by keeping it suffused 
with the spirit of prayer. 

The creative beliefs are those which arise 
out of deep and searching human experi- 
ence and vindicate themselves in the very 
vicissitudes of life. They have enough hard- 
ness to be strong and stable. But they are 
like the coral reef upon which at last the 
palms wave and whose island echoes with 
the cries of happy children at play in the 
tropical sunshine. A belief is not something 
enforced upon a man from without. It is 
something which rises from within the hour 
of his sternest struggle and his highest com- 
mitment and his most noble insight 

The Christian worker funds a funda- 
mental source of inspiration in his deepest 
hour of devotion and in his most eager hour 
of action from one great conviction about 
the source of all life. He is sure that when 
you ask the ultimate question you must 

56 



THE CREATIVE BELIEFS 



always enquire " Who? " and not " What? " 
In other words he finds a conscious mind 
and a conscious heart and a conscious will 
at the center of the universe. This is the 
very basis of all his hope and of all his eager 
and devoted action. It puts the last quality 
of energy into prayer. For in the light of 
this conviction prayer is not loftly soliloquy. 
It is high companionship. And you cannot 
have companionship unless there is a great 
Companion. The harder the pressure the 
more difficult the problems the more dis- 
couraging the environment the more it is 
necessary for the Christian worker to find 
refuge and inspiration in that greater en- 
vironment which becomes effective in a 
man's life when he becomes conscious of the 
presence of God. 

The modern man lives in a world where 
many brilliant people are all the while exer- 
cising wonderful ingenuity in confusing all 
the issues. They are sure that white is not 
so very white and that black is not so very 
black. In fact they reduce most experience 
to a rather dull grey. Now the masterful 

57 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

and productive personalities of the world 
have never been able to rest in this blurring 
of all moral and spiritual distinctions. They 
have been conscious of very sharp lines of 
cleavage. They have been conscious of very 
sternly demanding loyalties. And this be- 
lief that the distinction between right and 
wrong is a fundamental and eternal thing is 
the very basis of all effective living above 
the level of flashing impulses and the con- 
tention of mutally antagonistic passions. 

Then the belief that God can become ar- 
ticulate in human life, the belief that God 
has become articulate in human life, the be- 
lief that we see the face of God in the face 
of Jesus Christ is a perpetual fountain of in- 
spiration. Many of the masterful thinkers 
of the world have felt that the great God is 
utterly shut off from human experience. 
And as a result they have lived in an im- 
poverished and depleted world. If God is 
shut off from human life then man is shut off 
from God. And as we face the actualities 
of life more and more it becomes necessary 
to have an articulate God who speaks our 

58 



THE CREATIVE BELIEFS 



language and can use our minds and bodies 
if we are to have any permanent source of 
inspiration. An absent God means at last 
a hopeless world. 

Then very simply and very reverently but 
with all assurance we must say that if there 
is any permanent hope for the world men 
must worship a God who has been hurt. In 
this world of brutal and terrible pain a Deity 
who has never suffered becomes a God who 
cannot command our hearts. An infinite 
spectator does not meet the need of men 
and women in this terrible world. Only a 
God who had felt the passion and the pain. 
Only a God whose own heart has been 
broken can speak the word which captures 
man's last allegiance and his complete com- 
mitment. Only a God who speaks from the 
cross can make it possible for men to believe 
in a crown of hope and success either here 
or hereafter. 

Of course all this is only a hint of the 
fashion in which the Christian is to take his 
deepest beliefs about God and life into his 
hour of prayer and there to meditate upon 

59 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

them to brood over them to allow them to 
become the possessing realities which shine 
before his mind, release his imagination, en- 
ergize his will and send him forth eager to 
live in the light of all their meaning. These 
great beliefs and all the other matters which 
grow out of the deepest Christian experi- 
ence will reveal just that creative quality 
which quickens the whole personality and 
releases its fullest power. 

From the time of devotion when the great 
realities of his faith have glowed like rising 
suns before him a man will go forth to all 
the grime and evil of the turbulent modern 
town with a new light in his eye and a new 
potency in all his activity. When Christian 
truth ceases to be just a matter of clear 
ideas and becomes a matter of living experi- 
ence everything is changed. In a sense a 
theology is always a dangerous thing until 
it is translated into burning reality in the 
hour of devotion and into just and brotherly 
activity in all the hours of life. 



60 



I 



VII 
THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD 

DANTE AUGHIERI spent a long 
and weary period of his life an exile 
from his native city of Florence. But 
he was never really far away from this city 
of his heart. He was always thinking of 
Florence. He was always writing with 
Florence in the background of his mind. 
He was always seeing Florence in the light 
of the eternal realities and the deathless 
sanctions of the divine conscience. He saw 
his own city against the background of the 
moral life of God. The Christian worker in 
the modern city needs to have just such an 
experience. He needs it for the sake of the 
city. He needs it for the sake of his 
own life. 

There are two experiences which interfere 
with the depth and definiteness of the moral 
and spiritual life of the Christian worker. 

61 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

One comes from the fashion in which the 
high enthusiasms wane and lose their in- 
spiration. The great lights which shone so 
resplendently in the first eager days of de- 
votion begin to burn dimly and at last are 
sometimes almost lost in the fog which 
gathers about the passing years. The other 
experience comes from an apprehension of 
how many different standards good men 
have held in different ages and how many 
different standards thoroughly disciplined 
minds defend today. As a knowledge of 
these things grows distinctions sometimes 
begin to lose their sharpness and the day 
may come when it is difficult to feel the old 
absolute compulsion of absolute standards. 
These experiences may at last take from the 
Christian worker just that glow of tri- 
umphant faith and that enthusiasm of defi- 
nite assurance without which his work can- 
not have its last and highest power. 

At this point there is one correcting and 
stabilizing and creative experience which is 
the secret of perpetual inspiration and the 
source of perpetual power. The final 

62 



THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD 

strategy of the Christian life is found in the 
fellowship of the Christian with the con- 
science of God. There are times when we 
are not alert enough to think the thoughts 
of God after Him. There are times when 
we are too dull to respond to the tidal move- 
ment of the heart of the master of life. But 
the sense of the conscience of God at once 
revives the mind and ere long rehabilitates 
the heart. The inner lethargy which de- 
pletes so many lives is impossible in the 
presence of an awareness of the quality of 
the movement of that infinite conscience in 
which all moral distinctions live eternally. 
Then here we have at last a sense of com- 
ing into contact with something absolute 
and changeless. Whatever men say about 
right and wrong there is an absolute stand- 
ard in the life of God himself and as we seek 
that we are delivered from the palsying 
sense of relativity which takes the power 
from so many of our judgments. Limited 
and finite as is our response to that divine 
moral life which is the conscience of God 
we have at once the sense that we are in 

63 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

contact in some real if partial way with the 
eternal and the unchangeable. 

Day by day we come to the hour of devo- 
tion to see our own lives not from the stand- 
point of our own likes or dislikes or even 
from the point of view dominated by the 
community standards. We come to see our 
lives through the eyes of Jesus who looked 
at all life through the eyes of God. There 
is something very searching about this ex- 
perience. It is a perpetual rebuke of that 
superficial complacency which has made 
many a life less than it might have become. 
The man who attempts to apply to his own 
life daily the conscience of God is committed 
to a new honesty and is sure to attain a new 
humility. He does not judge himself by 
other men. He judges his life by the eternal 
standard as that is seen in the Human Life 
Divine. And on the basis of the relentless 
honesty of this experience all sorts of won- 
derful and beautiful things come within the 
range of his appreciation and appropriation 
which were impossible before. The only 
moral safety of the individual is through 

64* 



THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD 

perpetually renewed contact with the con- 
science of God. 

Then he comes to see the groups of which 
he is most intimately a part through the 
same sort of searching experience. It is 
only safe to see other lives in this fashion 
after one has felt the full demand of the ex- 
perience upon one's own. Otherwise a man 
may be led into that moral bog where he 
ignores the evil in his own life and keeps 
himself occupied in repenting of the sins of 
others. Vicarious repentance has an im- 
portant place in human life. But it is never 
to be a substitute for individual repentance. 
It is a great thing to be convicted of the 
sins of society. But it becomes an experi- 
ence full of subtle moral danger if that con- 
viction is a substitute for the full and honest 
facing of the whole meaning of one's per- 
sonal life. It is easy for a man with an in- 
organic personality to escape from a con- 
sideration of his own need while he is occu- 
pied with the tragedy of the inorganic 
quality of the social organism. But after a 
man has met and as he meets his own per- 

65 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

sonal problem he must also face the prob- 
lems of the larger social groups. He must 
see his home in the light of the conscience 
of God. He must see his community in the 
light of the conscience of God. He must 
see his church in the light of the conscience 
of God. Here he will find all the summons 
of a great ideal to be realized and a great 
failure out of which men must pass on the 
highway toward success. Plato believed 
that the ideal in its perfect form was more 
real than the actual as that was show^n in 
this world. There is a perfect standard of 
all relationships which is perpetually alive 
in the conscience of God. And by that 
standard our thought and our action are to 
be perpetually renewed. 

The Christian worker will move through 
his city in fellowship with the conscience 
of God. 

" He came to the desert of London town 
Mirk miles broad. 
He wandered up and he wandered down 
Ever alone with God." 

A city has endless ways of confusing us. 
66 



THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD 

The lights fall in such various and bewilder- 
ing fashions. There are so many angles from 
which to view all the manifold complexity 
of the life of the great town. It is easy to 
become dizzy. It is easy to lose that moral 
perspective which is essential to leadership. 
But when a man moves through his city 
with the conscience of the Master of Life 
alive in him the lines become more and more 
simple and clear and plain. He sees the city 
through the eyes of Christ. And now it is 
not possible for him to lose his way. He 
comes with fresh and unspoiled eyes to all 
the adroit sophistications of a modern town. 
And like one of the great prophets he be- 
comes the conscience of the city which he 
loves so much that he dare not take lightly 
its dark and evil ways. 

The Christian worker comes at length to 
our whole social and economic structure 
with his eyes sharpened through his renew- 
ing moral experience. He sees all the ar- 
ticulations of society with the conscience 
which Jesus has given to him and which he 
dares to believe is the conscience of the 

67 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

great God of all. All matters of property, 
all matters of production and distribution, 
all matters of buying and selling must at 
last meet this test. Men who have appro- 
priated the conscience of the Master of Life 
are to renew the social order. 

There is another step. The Christian 
worker lifts his eyes and sees the whole 
world with the conscince of its Lord. Now 
it is that race prejudice dies in his life. 
Now it is that the vision of a friendly and 
brotherly world possesses him. The inter- 
national mind is the creation of God's con- 
science coming to dwell in the life of men. 

All of this is given its supreme power of 
moral and spiritual seizure as the Christian 
worker looks upon the cross where Jesus 
died. In that great deed of suffering love 
the moral life of God found perfect expres- 
sion. Years and years will be required to 
fathom even a few of its implications. But 
standing in its presence a man faces the 
realities which are to be related to his own 
life, to the life of his home, to the life of the 
city, to the social structure, and to the 



THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD 

world. The cross is the conscience of God 
in action. And the Christian worker is to 
carry every moral and spiritual reality which 
Calvary expresses out into all the relations 
of life. 



69 



VIII 

THE ORGANIC LIFE 

TOWARD the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury Savonarola was for one golden 
moment the master of Florence. A 
great new passion swept the populace. It 
seemed as if indeed the Holy City had come 
to be one with the great Italian town. All 
activities and all institutions began to be 
built about one deep and noble purpose of 
loyalty to God. It seemed that the city had 
become a great organism built about a liv- 
ing passion for doing the will of God. It 
was only a moment but it was a moment 
which will hold its place in the annals of the 
human spirit as that spirit has expressed it- 
self in the great towns of the world. The 
Christian worker in the modern city has 
many haunting memories of experiments in 
other cities and in other lands in these mat- 
ters of making the ideal the real. He does 

70 



THE ORGANIC LIFE 



not forget Savonarola as he goes about his 
work and he does not forget the golden mo- 
ment of his success. He deliberately finds 
time to remember such things. He deliber- 
ately finds time to analyze his own city, his 
own land, his own church, and his own 
world. He is not afraid to take time to 
think. 

" The man who idly sits and thinks 
May sow a nobler crop than corn. 
For thoughts are seeds of future deeds, 
And when God thought a world was born." 

So sang a poet whose mind was full of all 
the wonderful contribution which good and 
sound thinking has made to the life of the 
world. To be sure he only expressed a part 
of the truth. There is a good deal of idle 
sitting and thinking which does not lead to 
any particularly valuable crop. And on the 
whole it is very necessary to have the corn 
as well as the ideas and the ideals. 

It is also true however that the hour of 
deep and brooding meditation and the hour 
of earnest prayer in respect of the actualities 

71 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

of experience may prove most fruitful. The 
dreamer who turns his dreaming into will- 
ing and his willing into action has the future 
of the world in his hand. The practical 
mystic is the man of power. 

When an eager and honest young man 
with the modern accent in all his thinking 
and feeling and acting sits alone with the 
thought of one of our great present day 
cities playing through his mind it is a mem- 
orable experience. The sensitive surface 
of his life responds with instant capacity to 
receive deep impressions as all the color and 
all the energy and all the audacious speed 
and the hot intensity of a modern town pass 
into the portal of his spirit. Here is one of 
the nerve centers of civilization. It is all 
athrob with life. It is the very quintessence 
of that spirit of notable achievement, of 
vivid experience and of existence at the 
highest pressure which makes up our mod- 
ern world. 

But the more this sensitive and impres- 
sionable mind broods upon the great and 
populous modern town the more it becprnes 

72 



THE ORGANIC LIFE 



evident that with all its wonder and beauty 
and charm it is the scene of a bitter tragedy. 
It is not a place of harmony. All the aspects 
of its life do not fit together to make a com- 
plete and articulate life. It is the dwelling 
place of clenched antagonisms. It is the 
home of bitter cruelty and hard and sordid 
selfishness. It is the seat of that dark dis- 
integration which destroys the body and 
deadens the conscience and dulls the mind 
and breaks the spirit. There is much good 
in it. There is much beauty in it. But 
taken altogether the city is a unity made 
up of compromising discords. It has one 
great defect. It is inorganic. 

As he thinks of these things the man of 
brooding meditation sees a happy vision of 
the city as it might become. He sees the 
golden beauty of a brotherhood which might 
enrich the life of all the dwellers in the town. 
He pictures a city whose buildings, whose 
customs and whose citizens all express the 
organic qualities of harmony and sympathy. 
He longs to h§lp in the work of producing 
such a town, 



73 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

Then the mind of our thinker takes loftier 
flight. He looks at the life of all the world. 
He sees in rapid review all the nations. He 
sees the ships upon the seas, the trains 
swiftly passing upon the lands. He looks 
upon the agriculture, the manufacturing, and 
the commerce of the world. At first it all 
seems like the perfect achievement of some 
great organizing genius. But he looks at it 
more closely. He sees all the terrible rav- 
ages of war. He sees industrial and eco- 
nomic disturbances. He sees the sullen pas- 
sions of national hatred and of racial hos- 
tility. He sees concrete pictures of man's 
brutality to man in all the continents of the 
world. And so he comes at last to an in- 
evitable appraisal. The world as a whole 
like the city is the victim of a great tragedy. 
It is not the achievement of a great har- 
mony. It is the wide lying action of a great 
discord. The world is inorganic. It has 
never learned how to function. It has never 
achieved unity of mind or heart or con- 
science or spirit. The apple of discord has 
fallen in every city and in every land. It 

74 



THE ORGANIC LIFE 



has been tasted in every island. The nations 
have never learned how to live together. 
In the folly of their struggle they seem a 
vast worldwide conspiracy for the destruc- 
tion of the race. 

Then the thinker turns from the world 
and the city to the church. Here at least 
the lights of a noble idealism shine. Here 
at least the brightness not found on sea or 
land dwells in the heart of a divine institu- 
tion. In the midst of the darkness this light 
shines clearly. At least with some such ex- 
pectation he comes to his survey of the 
church. And he does find much that is 
beautiful and much that is good and much 
that is worthy in the church of the living 
God. But as he looks closely he makes a 
tragic discovery. Here too is folly. Here 
too is failure. Here too the forces of dis- 
integration are at work. Once and again 
groups of the world wide church have fought 
so wrathfully over symbols that they have 
forgotten realities. Once and again they 
have refused to meet the challenge of the 
Master and to allow the full light of his 

75 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

truth and his demand to fall upon the indi- 
vidual the social and the economic life. The 
church was meant to be the conscience of 
mankind. Once and again it is seen that the 
church itself needs a conscience stern and 
candid. The closer the examination the 
more clear and necessary is the verdict. The 
church is inorganic. It has not achieved 
that unity of spirit which expresses the mind 
of Christ. It is full of moral and spiritual 
discord. It needs healing when it should be 
bringing healing to the world. 

Then if our thinker is quite honest he 
takes one more step. Having seen the 
vision of the inorganic city and the inor- 
ganic world and the inorganic church he 
turns to search into the quality of his own 
life. He turns all the light of fearless in- 
vestigation to hear upon his own person- 
ality. He examines his own soul. And here 
he finds much that is beautiful. He finds a 
wealth of aspiration. He finds a great out- 
reach after goodness and after God. But as 
his insistent honesty presses him to con- 
tinue his inspection he is forced at last to 

76 



THE ORGANIC LIFE 



admit that here too the forces of disinte- 
gration are at work. His nature is not nobly 
organized about one great purpose. He has 
not found the secret of inner harmony. 
Clamorous impulses madly contend upon 
the arena of his inner life. Wild passions 
fling themselves hot and insistent into his 
consciousness. Subtle and sordid selfish- 
nesses have their way with him. Sometimes 
his deed which seems fair and good has a 
tiny hissing serpent at the root of it. He 
too is inorganic. He the man who would 
like to remake the city needs to be remade 
himself. He the man who would like to re- 
construct the world needs himself to be 
reconstructed. He who would like to re- 
generate the church must himself find re- 
generation. And his passion to help the 
city and the world and the church drives 
him with remorseless honesty to face the 
inorganic quality of his own life. His social 
passion leads him to that desperate candid 
self analysis which makes it clear that if he 
is to be a socially productive man his own 
life must be made organic. 

77 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

Here he reaches the crisis in one of the 
supreme hours of his own soul in its dealing 
with God, with moral reality, and with life. 
For when a man has discovered that he is 
inorganic he is ready for that deep and per- 
manent ministry of the spirit of God in his 
own soul which will renew all the forces of 
his life. He is ready for that mighty action 
of the Living Christ which will organize 
every energy of his personality about a new 
purpose and a new devotion. He is ready 
to be made organic by the grace of God. 

The method by which this comes about is 
of the deepest interest. The man who has 
discovered that his own life is inorganic 
looks at the life of Jesus. And at once he is 
startled and amazed by the contrast. Here 
is a life which is in complete harmony with 
itself. Here is a life which is entirely or- 
ganic. There was no untamed chaos in the 
life of Jesus. There was no mutinous desire 
successfully lifting the flag of revolt against 
his central purpose. He was in complete 
command of his body, his mind, his con- 
science, his heart. His whole life func- 

78 



THE ORGANIC LIFE 



tioned in perfect unity. It came with strug- 
gle. It came with battle. But the struggle 
was victorious conflict. And the battle 
closed with the triumph of perfect goodness 
expressed in perfectly human ways. As the 
life of Jesus is studied more completely it is 
seen that he achieved this organic quality 
because he was in perpetual fellowship with 
God. In that fellowship all contradictions 
were resolved into harmony and all that was 
partial became complete. Now the man in 
the midst of personal struggle comes to the 
place where he opens his life to the work of 
Christ. He finds a new center of devotion. 
He finds a new heart of purpose. Through 
his relation to Christ he enters into moral 
and spiritual fellowship with the God whose 
life is completely organic. The forces of 
disintegration have lost command of his life. 
He has found the sources of moral and spir- 
itual renewal. 

Every spirit enters its own holy of holies 
if it comes to such an hour as this. And out 
of it new human eyes look upon the world 
and a new human heart takes up the tasks 

79 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

of life. When a man has been made organic 
he can work with passion undying and with 
power mysterious in its constancy for the 
making of an organic city and an organic 
world through the activity of an increas- 
ingly organic brotherhood which is the liv- 
ing church. 



80 



IX 

LIVING IN THE CITY OF MAN FOR 
THE CITY OF GOD 

THERE is much to be said about the 
great days of Calvin in the city of 
Geneva. There is much that is good. 
There is something that is not so good. 
But when we have gone over the whole 
story and have considered the failures as 
well as the successes the mistakes as well as 
the achievements it remains to be said that 
it was a very gallant attempt to make 
the city of God a reality in the city of 
men. And from Geneva out all over Eu- 
rope there moved great tides of regenerat- 
ing life. 

The Christian worker has a great life of 
devotion. We have been considering its 
various aspects in all of these studies. He 
has also the responsibility for living a life 
of fruitful activity. He must bring all which 

81 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

he has received in the hour of the inner com- 
munion to the hours of energetic service. 
His life is to be like a book whose leaves are 
for the healing of the city. Inspiration is to 
be translated into action. The city of God 
is to be in a new sense a reality in the city 
of man because the Christian worker moves 
in and out of its manifold doors and walks 
in its busy streets. 

The city ceases to be a mere vast mass of 
people to the man who dwells within its 
boundaries It becomes a matter of close 
human contact with a few very definite men 
and women and little children. The evangel 
of the human touch is an influence of unsur- 
passed power. All about the town the man 
who goes forth from, the inner communion 
lights bright little candles in particular hu- 
man lives. He meets a young man whose 
ideals are waning. He leaves him with the 
warmth of a new enthusiasm and the glow- 
ing energy of a new commitment. He 
stands in the midst of little children who 
have already learned too much of what Ed- 
win Markham once called " the fearful wis- 

82 



THE CITY OF GOD 



dom of the street." With a bright and con- 
tagious energy he meets these children in 
the terms of their own life and experience. 
Very simply and very vividly he brings to 
their minds a whole series of pictures clean 
and beautiful and true. He guides them in 
their play and makes play a school of char- 
acter. He gives the very best he has to give 
knowing that there is nothing so potential 
as childhood. And so new human centers 
of goodness and faithfulness are created all 
about him. He meets men and women from 
many a land across the sea. They are lonely 
and confused and disheartened in this new 
world. He takes such a direct and actual 
interest in them that their eyes begin to 
shine with a new gladness. He talks to 
them of the lands from which they come 
and they are surprised to find that he knows 
and cares about things which they supposed 
were never thought of in this strange and 
preoccupied land. He gives them a subtle 
sense that they are of value, and they have 
something to give as well as something to 
receive in America. And so he is all the 

83 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

while helping to create good citizens as well 
as good men. He meets those whose lives 
are fairly covered with the slime of the dark 
and evil places of the town. Their hard and 
hopeless faces sieze upon his heart. One by- 
one he learns to know them. He believes 
in them when they do not dare to believe in 
themselves. He has high expectations for 
them when they see only darkness ahead. 
And by and by they begin to hope. By and 
by they are ready for the knowledge of that 
Master of hope who sends all Christian 
workers into all the dark places of our great 
towns. And as the years go by there is a 
great and golden harvest of good secured 
from those areas where one finds the last 
and the lowest and the least. There is 
always a romance in the pursuit of the indi- 
vidual spirit which is to be won for Christ. 
The worker becomes a mighty hunter before 
the Lord. 

The city is not only a place of people. It 
is also the home of manifold institutions. 
And very soon the Christian worker dis- 
covers that these institutions will have much 

84 



THE CITY OF GOD 



to do with those purposes which are the 
deepest matter in his life. Some of the in- 
stitutions are good. Some of them are evil. 
And some are a mixture of possibilities of 
good and possibilities which are not good at 
all. The public school is rendering a service 
in the midst of our great towns which is 
almost beyond praise. It is more than a 
place of training. It is the open door to a 
veritable new world to multitudes of chil- 
dren in the most evil and sordid surround- 
ings. It must be utilized to the limit of its 
power of service. The public appreciation 
of its possibilities as well as the understand- 
ing of its achievements must be developed 
until the men and women of the town really 
know the meaning of their schools. So the 
Christian worker is the advocate and the 
supporter of this great institution. He 
knows how important it is that men and 
women of character do its work and he is a 
perpetual influence in the direction of secur- 
ing the best men and women for the teach- 
ing profession. He finds himself a part of 
a highly organized municipal life. Too 

85 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

often there is much that is evil in its struc- 
ture and its methods. The friend of the 
town finds himself a fighter in the town. 
The battle with municipal corruption is an 
ever returning fight. It is won for a day. 
Then it must be fought and won again. And 
the man who sees the invisible battlements 
of the Lord as he goes about his work in a 
modern city cannot refuse to have his share 
in this never ending fight. He is always on 
guard. He is always ready for the fray. 
Then there is vast industrial and economic 
organization. It is the glory of the city even 
as it is its peril. There is marvelous good 
in it. There is tragic evil in it. And with 
poise and steadiness the Christian worker 
must apply to this present order the prin- 
ciples of the kingdom of God. He is 
most careful in the collection of facts. He 
is most scientific in the movement toward 
generalizations. He believes in class coop- 
eration and not class war. And he sees to it 
that the community comes into possession 
of all the facts which are necessary to an 
Honest judgment in dealing with our funda- 

86 



THE CITY OF GOD 



mental industrial problems. There are 
many matters which he can reach as can no 
other investigator. Then there are institu- 
tions for the corruption of society, insti- 
tutions which organize vice and pander to 
every evil appetite. And these find a foe of 
restless vigilance in the Christian worker 
who knows that they must be cast out of 
our life if our towns are ever to do the clean 
and pure will of God. He has witnessed the 
lives they have broken and he hates them 
with a perfect hatred. There is that A^ast 
institution of the church. It involves differ- 
ences of creed and method. But under the 
stress of the desperate demands of the strug- 
gle against evil and for good the friend of 
the city is willing to cooperate with every 
man who with whatever religious back- 
ground wants to make the city a place where 
God reigns. He knows that Jew and Roman 
Catholic and Protestant have in common the 
ten commandments, the belief in a righteous 
God, and the belief in the triumph of right- 
eousness and brotherhood in the world. He 
feels that there are many battles in which 

87 



STRATEGY OF DEVOTIONAL LIFE 

they can win if they will only fight together 
for the good of the town. 

There is the spirit of the city. You can- 
not see it. But you can feel it. And its 
subtle mastery is a matter of vast strategy. 
The friend of the town is all the while trying 
to win it to a nobler character. In a thousand 
manifold ways he is working to create that 
impalpable thing a community spirit which 
shall be saturated with the very quality of 
the spirit of Jesus Christ. In the books he 
recommends to young people, in the activi- 
ties he promotes, in the battles he fights, he is 
all the while laboring for that consummation 
which is reached as the spirit of the city be- 
comes a spirit of reverence, a spirit of in- 
tegrity, a spirit of goodness, a spirit created 
by the mastery of those principles which are 
fundamental in the kingdom of God. And 
high above all else in this realm of the ideals 
for which he contends is his vision of the 
living Christ crowned at last Lord of the 
town even as he is now Lord of the life of 
the man who goes with such an eager light 
in his eyes about its multitudinous streets, 

88 



THE CITY OF GOD 



It is only from a life of communion with 
the God whose face we see in the face of 
Christ that it is possible to go forth to work 
triumphantly at such tasks in our modern 
cities. It is only as the inner communion is 
translated into the life of action that the city 
feels the impact of new and transforming 
energies with exhaustless power. The city 
must be remade if the world is to be saved. 
And the strategy of the devotional life as 
we view it from the heart of a modern town 
lies just in the fact that it holds the secret 
by which the men and women who are to 
give new life to the city can be secure in the 
possession of that life themselves. The man 
who is alive is irresistible. The city can re- 
sist anything but life. The life of the spirit 
can renew the body of every modern 
metropolis. 



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